Update from BASIC 13/6/01
There are six items this week. The first two are reports from the recent NATO foreign and defence ministers? meetings held in Budapest and Brussels, respectively. Both articles detail attempts by the United States to weaken NATO commitment to the various systems of multilateral arms control, thereby enabling Washington to pursue its controversial missile defence system.
The growing transatlantic divide over the issues of arms control and missile defence is a theme pursued in item three, a recent article from the New York Times. The article also looks forward to the upcoming meeting between Presidents Bush and Putin.
A growing desire within Europe to hang on to the systems of multilateral arms control in the face of US pressure is highlighted in item four. The article reports on a meeting between France and Germany yesterday where the two nations committed themselves to pursuing diplomatic means of tackling the threats posed by the proliferation of missile technologies.
, Item five details a recent Pentagon announcement concerning the next flight test of the missile defence system, which met with little success under the Clinton presidency. The test is now slated to take place in late July.
Item six is a link to a recent report from the Oxford Research Group on US missile defence. The report gives an analysis of the current debate and looks forward to the possible options that both Europe and the US could pursue.
Finally, according to an article in Monday's Daily Telegraph, "Berlusconi backs Bush on missile defence and global warning", "Mr Bush is planning to visit Britain next month .... Although details of the visit are still being worked out, it is expected to be immediately before or after the G8 economic summit in Genoa." The G8 summit is being held on July 20-22.
1) US Concerns Drive NATO Debate on Arms Control By Mark Bromley, BASIC
2) ABM Treaty Dropped By NATO Amid 'Changing Circumstances', By Christine
Kucia, BASIC
3) Mr. Putin, Meet Mr. Bush: Who Needs Treaties? By Thom Shanker, New
York Times, June 10, 2001, Pg. IV-1
4) France, Germany propose EU plan to curb missile threat, AFP, 12
June 2001
5) First Bush Missile Defense Test Said Likely in July, By Jim Wolf,
June 8
6) "The Strategic Chameleon: Perceptions and Implications of US Plans
for Strategic Missile Defence", By Nick Ritchie, Oxford Research Group
http://www.oxfrg.demon.co.uk/frame%20-%20publications.htm
1) US Concerns Drive NATO Debate on Arms Control By Mark Bromley, BASIC
BRUSSELS, 8 June - At the 7-8 June NATO defence ministers? meeting here, the communiqué from the Alliance's Defence Planning Committee and the Nuclear Planning Group (DPC/NPG) matched the restraint on arms control initiatives shown at the May NATO foreign ministers? meeting in Budapest. As with the official statements issued at the foreign ministers? meeting, radical alterations in the Alliance?s arms control policy were avoided. However, the United States gave further indication of its determination to move beyond the traditional forms of arms control and deterrence.
An end to arms control?
In what could be declared as a significant victory for arms control
supporters, NATO support for the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)
emerged unscathed. In the December 2000 DPC/NPG communiqué, member
states ?confirmed our commitments made at this year's Review Conference
on the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and will
contribute to carrying forward the conclusions reached there?. The 2001
communiqué reaffirmed NATO?s ?determination to contribute to the
implementation of the conclusions of the 2000 NPT Review Conference?.
At the same time, a clearly discernible change in tone was evident in the DPC/NPG?s 7 June communiqué. The DPC/NPG communiqué of 5 December 2000 ?reaffirmed the continued importance attached by Allies to full implementation of and compliance with international nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation regimes?. The statement issued at this most recent meeting made no mention of ?full compliance?, stating only that ?NATO has a long standing commitment to arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation, which will continue to play a major role in the achievement of the Alliance security objectives?.
On the issue of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, a recommendation of ?early entry into force, and full implementation? became an urging for ?all states to maintain existing moratoria on nuclear testing?. The communiqué also implicitly accepted the fact that any future reductions of US and Russian arsenals probably would take place outside of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) framework. All mention of START II and START III were dropped from the communiqué, stating only ?we recognize the achievements of the START process to date and strongly support the ongoing process towards achieving further reductions of strategic nuclear weapons deployed by the United States and Russia?.
US Rebuffed?
NATO officials were keen to play down the impression, prevalent at
the recent Foreign Ministers? meeting in Budapest, that the United States
had been defeated in its attempts to gain further concessions from the
Allies, especially on the questions of arms control and threat assessments.
NATO Secretary General George Robertson said, ?I think this meeting today
will bear out the fact that last week?s news stories of an Alliance divided
were in reality pure fiction?.
The United States also countered these notions with its agenda for further action on arms control issues. A sheet of talking points, issued by US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld, talked of a ?new framework of deterrence?. The document insisted that deep cuts in the US nuclear arsenal were imminent but made clear that traditional forms of arms control agreements would not necessarily be central to the process. ?Moving to lower numbers could be done in a number of ways? the document stated, ?including reciprocal approaches, arms control, unilateral initiatives - or some combination?. The document also made clear the US?s intention to ?move beyond the ABM Treaty? and deploy a missile defence system at the earliest opportunity.
While its examination of arms control issues is still in its early stages, the direction is clear: US President George W. Bush is determined to move beyond the bilateral and multilateral structures that governed the processes of disarmament and non-proliferation. At present, concrete alternatives to the traditional process of arms control have not been brought forward as the United States works through its numerous ongoing defence policy reviews. In particular, its overarching Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) is not yet completed, and any ambitious moves are unlikely until it is completed some time towards the end of 2001.
Missile Defence On the Agenda
NATO moved a step closer to developing a missile defence capability
of its own. On 5 June NATO announced two successful bidders for contracts
to look at ?the technical feasibility, costs and timescales of a TMD system
based on NATO requirement?. The issuing of contracts further underlines
European interest in lower-tier missile defence capabilities, both by individual
member states as well as collectively within NATO. While significantly
less ambitious than the Bush administration?s aspirations, the similarities
between the NATO and US projects could further undermine European opposition
to US missile defence plans. Rumsfeld made the link explicit at the defense
ministers? gathering, stating: ?A number of Allies have, over the past
several years, done impressive work on shorter-range ballistic missile
defences. The development and testing program we envision will offer opportunities
for Allied participation?.
Differing Threat Perceptions
There were still clear indications of the uphill struggle the US faces
if it is to convince Allies of the threat posed by long-range, strategic
missiles and therefore the need to defend its mainland in ways otherwise
limited by the 1972 ABM Treaty. Rumsfeld offered the Allies a video presentation
detailing both advances in anti-missile technology, and the growing delivery
system capabilities of ?rogue states?. While a NATO spokesman said that
the presentation had convinced Alliance members that the threat was ?more
real?, the ministerial communiqués again avoided any mention of
a ?common threat?. Germany's defence minister, Rudolf Scharping, also raised
concerns about the wisdom of the US?s approach to the problem, stating:
?There needs to be a coherent political answer to the threats? Technological
means alone are not sufficient?.
Rumsfeld described the need to move beyond the ABM Treaty as ?simply inescapable?, and again reiterated the US?s determination to deploy a system as soon as possible. He even made reference to the possibility of deploying parts of the system before testing was complete ?to provide rudimentary defences to deal with emerging threats?. Exactly how such a move would conflict with the constraints of the ABM Treaty was left open to debate.
However, making modifications to the ABM Treaty will be a significant sticking point at the 16 June meeting between President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Slovenia. In a press conference of the NATO-Russia Permanent Joint Council on 8 June, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov told reporters that Russia?s position on the ABM Treaty was ?unchanged?. Ivanov pointed to the fact that since the ABM Treaty was signed in 1972, 32 bilateral and multilateral treaties had been signed that make the modern network of arms control. Ivanov questioned whether what the United States was proposing would maintain international security.
The question of what exactly the United States intends to put in the place of traditional arms control is far from clear, and the Bush administration is unlikely to make significant decisions before the NPR?s completion. Exactly how far the United States tries to push the Alliance away from its general support for multilateral arms control, built up over the past decade, will go a long way to determining how well NATO unity holds up.
2) ABM Treaty Dropped By NATO Amid ?Changing Circumstances, By Christine Kucia, BASIC
BUDAPEST, 31 MAY - Ministers of the 19 NATO states agreed at their biannual meeting a final communiqué that omitted reference to the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, which effectively overturned preceding statements that reaffirmed Alliance support for the U.S.-Russian agreement, and ushered into NATO new language that could sanction the U.S.?s unilateral nuclear activities.
The most recent communiqué does not address the ABM Treaty in part due to ?changing circumstances? globally, according to NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson. The final statement from this meeting indicates a shift in tenor from December 2000, when foreign ministers called for ?preserving and strengthening the ABM Treaty as a cornerstone of strategic stability and a basis for further reductions of strategic offensive weapons.?
US Secretary of State Colin Powell gave an early indication of the Bush administration?s sense of achievement in this meeting, stating that he was ?pleased that [the ABM Treaty] didn?t warrant particular attention this time around.?
However, the deafening silence of European allies on the ABM Treaty may be a critical step toward the end for the ABM Treaty and the beginning of more serious national missile defense discussions. Prior statements from key European allies, concerned about relations with Russia, called for keeping the ABM Treaty and perhaps agreeing an amendment to cover new technologies. With allies quiet on the issue, the United States may move forward with deployment decisions on a missile defense plan that could breach the treaty.
Europe Divides and Conquers?
European allies claimed their own success, however, in stymieing U.S.
efforts to have allies endorse the presence of a ?common threat,? which
would be a fundamental reason to establish missile defenses in the United
States and/or Europe. France and Germany responded strongly to the draft
language, countering that the document instead should cite a ?potential
threat.? The foreign ministers concluded that the Alliance should ?address
appropriately and effectively the threats that the proliferation of WMD
and their means of delivery can pose.? Further, the text calls for continued
consultations that ?will include appropriate assessment of threats.?
Division between the United States and a few key allies over the threat issue reportedly delayed the communiqué?s issue at the meeting. The dispute led observers to believe that this instance belies a deeper divide in the Alliance over the future of its defense role.
Other Nuclear Issues Weakened
However, other nuclear issues addressed in the communiqué indicated
that Europe was more accommodating to American intentions. NATO member
states gave an early indication that they would support U.S. unilateral
arsenal cuts when they ?welcome[d] the US commitment to achieve a credible
deterrent with the lowest possible number of nuclear weapons.? Absent mention
of formalizing the reductions through treaties, this line amounts to an
endorsement of unilateral cuts that, while welcome, could prove unverifiable
and reversible in the future.
The communiqué also toned down the language on nuclear testing. While in December 2000 NATO states professed that they ?remain committed to an early entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT),? the Alliance merely encouraged all states to continue to refrain from nuclear testing. This change takes the heat off of the United States, the sole NATO member state that has not ratified the treaty, to do so in the near future.
The START treaties received won a modest nod from NATO, which recognized the historic success of the process. However, the foreign ministers then professed support for the much-vaguer concept of ?achieving further reductions of the number of strategic nuclear weapons.? In not calling for progress specifically on STARTs II and III, as in December, the ministers potentially rendered the process dead.
What Will NATO Agree in Brussels?
European allies have put themselves in a difficult spot as next week?s
meeting of NATO defense ministers approaches. Communiqués from the
defense ministerials, which include the Defense Planning Committee/Nuclear
Planning Group (DPC/NPG) statement, tend to be more aggressive on nuclear
policy than the diplomatically-oriented documents from the foreign ministers.
The expectation that U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld will bring
some new information on possible U.S. NMD plans also heightens the importance
of this meeting for issues surrounding weapons of mass destruction.
Last year?s communiqué of the DPC/NPG upheld the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), supported ratification and early entry into force of the CTBT, and urged progress on STARTs II and III. These statements illustrate that NATO places ?continued importance? to full implementation of and compliance with international nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation regimes.? These statements will be watched in the wake of the changed tone by the foreign ministers, and in light of allegations that the United States attempted to remove the reference to the NPT as ?the cornerstone of the nuclear non-proliferation regime and the essential foundation for the pursuit of nuclear disarmament? from the Budapest communiqué.
In the document, the Alliance?s nuclear posture also was defined. It stated, ?NATO's nuclear forces are a credible and effective element of the Alliance's strategy of preventing war, and they are maintained at the minimum level of sufficiency to preserve peace and stability? Nuclear forces based in Europe and committed to NATO continue to provide an essential political and military link between the European and North American members of the Alliance.?
These points from the December 2000 DPC/NPG will be carefully monitored next week, as NATO defense ministers conclude a final document refining the Alliance?s stance on nuclear issues. The suspected divide in the Alliance between the United States and Europe may be seen better at that meeting, when NATO?s all-important nuclear policy, and Bush?s plans for NMD deployment, are at the fore.
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For further information:
Final Communiqué of the NATO Foreign Ministers Meeting, Budapest,
29 May
2001: http://www.nato.int/docu/pr/2001/p01-077e.htm
Final Communiqué of the NATO Defence Planning Committee and the Nuclear Planning Group (DPC/NPG), Brussels, 7 June 2001: http://www.nato.int/docu/pr/2001/p01-087e.htm
Communiqués from Prior NATO Ministerial Meetings: http://www.nato.int/docu/comm.htm
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Site - Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers: http://www.clw.org/coalition/ctbindex.htm
The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties (START): Documents, Analysis, and
News - Arms Control Association http://www.armscontrol.org/ASSORTED/s3index.html
2000 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation
of Nuclear Weapons, Final Document - BASIC http://www.basicint.org/nuclear/revcon2000/FinalDocAdvance.htm
3) Mr. Putin, Meet Mr. Bush: Who Needs Treaties? By Thom Shanker, New York Times, June 10, 2001, Pg. IV-1
WASHINGTON -- To speak about Russia, it has been said, is to discuss the future of the world. America resumes its historic dialogue with Russia on Saturday when President Bush sits down for his first meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin, and it is a broad future indeed that they will consider.
To the extent that their afternoon discussion marks the formal start of negotiations between the two leaders on missile defense, the meeting holds the prospect of revising, for good or ill, the entire way the world will think about nuclear security for the next generation.
Will it be based on the interwoven series of treaties written during the cold war - treaties that gave Americans and Soviets whatever sense of security they had that nobody would pull a nuclear trigger one night and blow the whole world up? The cold war is dead, and with it the terror in the night, but does that mean the treaties no longer make sense? And if they don't, what replaces them? Are there new understandings that can be reached to prevent the emergence of a new rivalry and a new arms race?
All that will be potentially on the table next weekend in Ljubljana, Slovenia -- an interesting place for such a discussion, lying as it does between the old East and West, in a country that didn't even exist during the cold war.
Formally, the discussion will be about the Antiballistic Missile Treaty, from which the Bush administration has repeatedly said the United States should release itself. The 1972 agreement enshrined vulnerability as a virtue by barring both superpowers from building a credible national defense, and administration officials now say it should have been allowed to fall with the Berlin Wall; it was, after all, based on the notion that the only way to control cold war animosities was to make nuclear war a synonym for mutual suicide.
These days, President Bush is saying a missile defense would also allow America to make deep cuts in its nuclear arsenal, even perhaps unilaterally; this, at least is a goal welcomed by members of the arms control community who don't much like Mr. Bush's pursuit of missile defenses.
But in framing these proposals, the president is asking some remarkably challenging - his critics might say dangerous -- questions about nuclear theology. They go far beyond the ABM Treaty, or even the relationship with Russia.
President Bush is imagining, and some of his senior officials are advocating, a new kind of security relationship with Russia, and other countries like China. Built not on a foundation of concrete arms control treaties, it would radically restructure how Washington and Moscow traditionally guaranteed stability and predictability and peace itself.
Arms control pacts, the administration argues, have inherent flaws: they freeze time from the day they are signed -- or from the moment negotiations begin. Many of President Bush's senior appointees have negotiated treaties for previous presidents, and believe the process is bulky, slow, prone to problems in the Senate and not responsive to America's current security needs.
These days, the officials say, arms treaties with Russia bring insecurity instead of certainty, because they seem to confirm a reality -- the balance of terror -- that no longer exists; because they don't let either side take advantage of new technologies to defend against missiles; and because they don't take account of emerging new threats to both signatories.
That's the intellectual's argument, anyway. A brawnier complaint -- against allowing virtually any treaties, not just the old cold war ones, to frame America's security architecture -- is also heard in administration corridors and in Senate confirmation hearings. It says that in a world of proliferating weapons of mass destruction, and of the means to deliver them great distances, treaties only bind those who intend to keep them and offer legal cover to cheaters.
But critics of the administration's long-term strategy say those comments are disingenuous, that they shift attention from a campaign to create a world in which America is unbound from its line-by-line obligations, free to pursue its self-interests unfettered by treaty law.
These advocates of a treaty-based security regime point to decades in which arms agreements spelled out rights and responsibilities clearly enough to guarantee stable relations. Even if those laws now need updating, this argument goes, living under them is far safer than living in a world without any laws.
When they hear the Bush brief, the Russians and Europeans of course want to know: What would replace this aging arms control architecture? No administration official can say for sure, beyond a promise that it will be the subject of serious consultations in Moscow and NATO's capitals.
The administration, it seems, is imagining not negotiations on discrete arms control treaties, but separate meetings over months and years, bilateral and multilateral, on a range of security issues to lay down broad new rules of international relations.
IN a way, the meeting on Saturday will be the first test of that way of doing things, because a general understanding about missile defenses is the matter at hand.
Knowing how skeptical Europeans (and the Senate's majority Democrats) are, the administration has been drafting incentives for Russian cooperation on missile defense that really could become markers toward a broader relationship with Russia. They don't only focus on managing nuclear arms -- perhaps with some aspects of a missile defense built and operated with Russia -- but include language on halting proliferation, a grave Russian concern along its southern periphery; on resolving bloody regional disputes that dot Russia's outskirts; and on assuring a steady regimen of economic assistance. Some of the ideas are old. A few are fresh. Nobody expects them to be enough for Russia to dismantle the ABM Treaty, but administration officials say they are just an initial offering.
What begins Saturday, then, is a process of two presidents groping for new terms to define trust -- and if not trust, well, at least understanding, and if not understanding at least an agreed vocabulary for clarifying what both sides want and need.
THE language itself is interesting. The administration is consciously stepping back from the tone unilateralism it was using earlier this year. An attempt has begun at conversation with Russia -- and Europe - about the trust that can be placed in America's management of the alliance's security relationship with Russia.
At home, the tension between those who cite the stability brought by arms control treaties and those who challenge their usefulness was on display last week as the Senate Armed Services Committee reviewed some of President Bush's appointments to the Department of Defense.
Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, argued that killing the ABM Treaty without Russian assent could prompt Russia to keep a large arsenal of multiple-warhead missiles. "Would that fact," he asked, "be worthy of consideration by us relative to the question of whether we'd be more or less secure?" He also suggested that China might further expand its nuclear forces. And he challenged Douglas J. Feith, nominated to be under secretary of defense for policy, over writings in which he had argued that the ABM Treaty ceased to exist with the death of the Soviet Union, and that described the Chemical Weapons Convention as "junk arms control."
Mr. Feith responded: "If we make agreements that we can't enforce and that we have good reason to believe are going to be violated and are going to be open to countries that enter them cynically and in bad faith, the overall consequence of that over time is to cheapen the currency that we should really be preserving the value of."
Whatever logic and accuracy are bundled into the Bush arguments, many in Europe and Russia hear the reprise of unilateralism. They fear a world in which the United States, or any nation, can brag of slashing its warheads because the balance of terror is dead -- and, therefore, so are the treaties that regulated it. That, they say, is also a world in which that same nation can rebuild its arsenal to any level, anytime it wants.
In any event, another question will also be carried into Saturday's meeting and beyond: whether the Bush and Putin administrations are capable of reaching a new understanding on security -- or whether the leaders will talk past each other over the din of shorter-term political considerations.
Is there an incentive for Russia to sign off on anything anytime soon?
Not unless America can forge allied consensus on missile defense. Does
Mr. Putin risk anything by withholding his answer for too long? Certainly,
since missile defense advocates would describe Russian intransigence as
the final reason to move ahead, and quickly.
4) France, Germany propose EU plan to curb missile threat, AFP, 12 June 2001
FREIBURG, Germany, June 12 (AFP) - France and Germany called Tuesday for a common EU initiative to curb the spread of missile technology, a threat the United States is seeking to address with its controversial missile shield.
In a statement, the two governments also proposed holding an international conference on the threat posed by ballistic missiles once the European Union has agreed on a stance.
France and Germany said they "consider the risks of ballistic proliferation necessitate a strengthening of the multilateral instruments of non-proliferation."
"They consider that the European Union should take an initiative in this direction" based on the provisions of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), which seeks to curb the transfer of sensitive technology that could be used to develop missile systems, the joint declaration said.
The statement was issued by a Franco-German "Defense and Security Council" which met under the co-chairmanship of French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder during a Franco-German summit in Freiburg.
The two countries said they attached great importance to consultation by the United States with its European allies on its missile defense plans, saying this consultation should continue in close concert with EU member states.
The statement was issued just three days before an EU summit meeting in Gothenburg, Sweden, which US President George W. Bush is to attend.
The US government is seeking to develop a missile defense system to ward off the threat of attack from "rogue" states like Iraq, North Korea and Iran.
But objectors to the US missile defense plan, led by Russia and China, say that this would undermine the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty between Moscow and Washington.
The ABM treaty, which bars the United States and Russia from deploying national missile defense systems, also prohibits development and testing of sea-based, airborne and mobile ground-based missile defense systems.
The US idea for a defence system to shoot down incoming missiles is regarded with deep suspicion in France and other European countries, which believe it would upset the existing nuclear balance and encourage proliferation.
Chirac on Friday reaffirmed France's commitment to the principle of
nuclear deterrence that underpins ABM, saying that leaders of hostile countries
know that they would face massive retaliation if they were to use the technology
they are developing.
5) First Bush Missile Defense Test Said Likely in July, By Jim Wolf, June 8
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The first Bush administration flight test of a controversial multibillion dollar ballistic missile defense is likely to take place by the end of next month, a year after the last one failed, a Pentagon spokesman said on Friday.
The test would involve the same components as the last one -- a dummy warhead and decoy launched from California's Vandenburg Air Force Base and a prototype interceptor with a 120-pound ?kill vehicle? launched 4,300 miles away, from the Kwajalein Atoll in the Republic of the Marshall Islands. ?And hopefully, they'll meet somewhere over the Pacific,? said Air Force Lt. Col. Rick Lehner, spokesman for the Pentagon's Ballistic Missile Defense Organization. The test is likely in ?mid to late July, based on current planning,? he said.
Boeing Co. is the lead system integrator for U.S. missile defense. TRW Inc. builds the battle command, control and communications system. Raytheon Corp. builds the kill vehicle and Lockheed Martin Corp. is prime contractor on the current booster system. The last two of the three integrated flight tests to date -- often equated by the military to hitting a bullet with a bullet -- have failed, most recently on July 7.
Those misses led former President Bill Clinton on Sept. 1 to defer the politically charged decision on when to take the first steps toward deploying a national missile defense.
The project is estimated to cost as much $60 billion for the land-based leg of interceptors, radar stations and battle management network. On Thursday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told skeptical NATO allies in Brussels the United States would soon start to build a ?layered? shield involving ground, sea and space-based systems to cope with what President Bush perceives as a growing threat of ballistic missiles in the hands of unpredictable foes.
Russia, China and some U.S. allies oppose U.S. plans to change or abandon the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty the United States signed with the Soviet Union in 1972. Such changes would be necessary to deploy a national missile defense.
Lehner said there had been no pressure to bring forward the next test, which had been discussed for months as possibly taking place this month. The entire U.S. missile defense timetable is under review as part of a series of inquests into U.S. military strategy, weapons and spending ordered by Bush and Rumsfeld when they took office in January.
One possibility being considered is a crash program to put into place a rudimentary missile defense system before the end of Bush's term in 2004, the Washington Post reported on Friday.
Boeing has given a range of proposals -- including one that would put five interceptor missiles in Alaska by March 2004, before an advanced 'X-band' battle-management radar system could be built, the Post reported, citing unnamed officials.
But the new Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate caused by the defection of a lone Republican will make missile defense a hard sell for Bush. Key Democrats have long questioned whether the technology works and whether the diplomatic and financial trade-offs are worthwhile.
'We're not opposed to research, but to commit that level of revenue to a concept that may or may not prove to be practical or even do-able is something that I'm mystified by,' Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle told reporters.
House Democratic leader Richard Gephardt predicted Congress would block any move to early deployment 'without knowing that the system can actually work.'
(With additional reporting by John Whitesides)
6) "The Strategic Chameleon: Perceptions and Implications of US Plans for Strategic Missile Defence", By Nick Ritchie, Oxford Research Group http://www.oxfrg.demon.co.uk/frame%20-%20publications.htm
Mark Bromley
Analyst
British American Security Information Council (BASIC)
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